


Hardly fate

by gekidasa



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-01-27
Updated: 2012-01-27
Packaged: 2017-10-30 05:09:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/328094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gekidasa/pseuds/gekidasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Afterwards, Molly would always wonder what had made her decide to go into that pub on her way home from work that day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hardly fate

**Author's Note:**

> This popped in my head the other night, so I started writing it. I have an idea of where it'll go, but I don't really know how much of it there will be. 
> 
> The first part is mostly Molly introspection, but the idea is that it will be Molly/Lestrade eventually.

Afterwards, Molly would always wonder what had made her decide to go into that pub on her way home from work that day. 

It would, she would muse months later, be a lot more intriguing to be able to say that and mean it. To subscribe to the conceit that it was some fate that made her to stop there rather than go straight home like she always did.

But the truth was, Molly knew exactly what made her go into the pub. She was merely delaying going home, just as she had been for well over a week, because she wasn’t sure how to face what was waiting for her there.

A year ago, six months even, Molly would have found the idea of having Sherlock Holmes staying in her flat both delightful and incredible. And a little frightening, if she was being honest. She could never have foreseen the circumstances that would make it true, and those circumstances changed everything. 

It wasn’t just that, however. The truth was that it had all started to change for her at Christmas, when she’d realized, finally and forever, that Sherlock simply did not think of her romantically, nor would he ever. The genius detective, the master of deductions, had not even been able to figure out that the present wrapped so lovingly had been for him, that she’d dressed up in a dress she’d never before had the courage to wear hoping that maybe that night would be the night he noticed her. Instead he’d assumed that she had a new boyfriend, who she would be meeting him later, and had proceeded to list and belittle every single thing she had done thinking of him. He hadn’t meant to be cruel, she’d understood later. He simply hadn’t realized he had the power to hurt her like that, because he couldn’t even entertain the idea of her as anything other than the awkward forensic pathologist from Barts.

When she’d finally made it home, she had a long, bitter cry over it. Eventually her tears dried and she washed her face, and as she looked at herself in her bathroom mirror, she’d told herself “No more. This ends here.”

It hadn’t been that simple of course; she supposed this must be what a smoker felt like while trying to quit. But what she realized over the next few months was that her fascination with Sherlock Holmes was slowly but definitely fading, leaving in its place a dull ache. She no longer lost herself in romantic daydreams about him, about being the one person he opened up to (in fact, she realized instead that that position had been filled already by someone else, and that she should have seen it a long time ago). She no longer felt the blood rush to her cheeks in anticipation when she heard his voice in the hallways outside the morgue. And if his barbed, pointed commentary hurt just as much as it ever did... well, that was because Sherlock Holmes said hurtful things. He always had, and he probably always would.

But even as she fell out of love with him, she never stopped caring about him. In fact, now that she could see him more clearly, she was able to see the loneliness that he tried so hard to hide from others. And it touched her, it made her want to help, even if she didn’t think he would ever want her help.

Until the day when he needed her help. And she had given it to him, because she cared for him more now than she ever had when she’d been infatuated with him. She helped him fool the world. She gave him a place to stay, a couch to sleep on, until it was safe for him to go out and find other accommodations, make other arrangements.

It wasn't safe for him yet, so there he was, in Molly's flat. Bored out of his mind, he claimed.

Living with Sherlock Holmes was not easy, not in the slightest. It was painful, because of her personal history, but it was also exasperating. She understood, of course, that this was much harder on him than it was on her. He was supposed to be dead, after all, his reputation destroyed, his few friends disappointed and mourning. But she also knew that this was just the way he was. Difficult, unyielding and demanding.

John Watson, she realized, must have the patience of a saint. 

And so it was that that Thursday her feet slowed on her way to the tube station, and she paused in front of a corner pub, and without really thinking about it, turned to go in.

The last thing she expected was to see Greg Lestrade sitting at the bar.


End file.
